Political Ads, Often Negative, Try Instead to Accentuate the Positive

WASHINGTON — Outside political groups, long known for their negative advertisements featuring ominous music and foreboding narration, are trying something new this campaign season: a pivot to the positive.

Some of the best-known “super PACs” and outside groups — like Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by the conservative billionaires David H. and Charles G. Koch — are making an effort to also cast their candidates in an appealing way instead of solely attacking opponents. Already this year, 16 percent of Americans for Prosperity’s spots have been positive; in 2012, the group did not run a single one.

An ad by the group supporting Representative Steve Southerland II, Republican of Florida, focuses on his record of fighting President Obama’s health care law before it concludes, “Thank Steve Southerland for fighting to keep our health care decisions in our hands.”

The shift is the product of several factors — the renewed hope that positive commercials can break through the advertising clutter; lessons of the 2012 presidential race, when Mitt Romney and outside Republican groups largely failed to offer an alternate message to an onslaught of negative spots; and the increasing prevalence of stock footage made public by campaigns that makes producing positive ads easier.

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An ad by Ending Spending Action Fund supports Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator, and appeals to New Hampshire voters who oppose President Obama’s health care law.

“Any idiot can do a negative ad badly, and many do, but a good positive ad captures a sense of the candidate and the candidate’s connection to the place where he’s running,” said Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist who advises roughly a dozen super PACs and candidates, and who made the 2002 ad tying a Democratic senator from Georgia, Max Cleland, who lost both legs and his right hand in the Vietnam War, to Osama bin Laden. “I don’t pull a punch when a punch is necessary, but there is a certain craft to introducing yourself to people in this business that can get lost in the shuffle.”

By one group’s estimate, 29 percent of the spots by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, its affiliated nonprofit group, have had a positive spin so far this year; at the same point in 2012, the group had run no positive spots, and during the entire previous cycle, the group produced only three positive ads — accounting for roughly 1 percent of the spots it ultimately broadcast.

In all, 29 percent of the total spots by outside groups have been positive this election cycle, compared with the 20 percent that carried a positive message at the same point in 2012, according to the group, Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks every political ad on broadcast or national cable television.

Super PACs are not totally rewriting their campaign playbooks. Negative advertising works, and after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, which paved the way for unlimited spending by outside groups, they have largely considered themselves masters of the dark arts, preferring to leave the positive messages to the candidates themselves. So far, the change has been modest, and it remains unclear if it will hold through Election Day.

But with a historic barrage of outside groups’ money pouring into crucial states and districts across the country, the all-negative, all-the-time approach seems to be changing.

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An advertisement from the Senate Majority PAC supports the 2014 re-election bid of Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

The increase in dollars behind negative messages this early — Democrats estimate that their candidates have faced roughly $33 million worth of spots against them — has forced candidates and outside groups to respond, often with a combination of both negative and positive spots. And the negative has, in part, begotten the positive. “Super PACs can do positive ads to counter the negative ads that are being run by other super PACs,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a campaign finance watchdog group. “Positive ads by outside spending groups may well be run to counter the impact of all that negativity.”

“This is an arms race,” he added, “and people have to respond.”

Positive ads, strategists say, can be particularly effective in helping an incumbent combat negative attacks, or helping lesser-known candidates define themselves. In North Carolina, for instance, where Senator Kay Hagan, a Democrat, does not yet have an official Republican challenger but is already facing a slew of negative ads — roughly $10 million worth, most of it from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity — Senate Majority PAC, a group that supports Democratic Senate candidates, went up on the air with an ad supporting her re-election.

“North Carolina can count on Kay Hagan,” the 30-second ad begins, showing North Carolinians praising Ms. Hagan’s work on their behalf. (The ad also manages to get in a few digs at the Republican who is likely to be her opponent after the Republican primary.)

Officials with House Majority PAC, which also supports Democrats, said the sheer number of Koch-financed messages inspired most of the positive commercials it had run. “It just makes sense for us to do positive ads where we see our candidates out there far unfairly being beaten up, especially by outside groups, especially the ones funded by the Koch brothers,” said Matt Thornton, the group’s communications director.

Charlie Spies, treasurer of Restore Our Future, a super PAC that supported Mr. Romney in 2012, said that positive ads could be helpful early in a campaign, when fewer political commercials are broadcast and the money often goes further. “If you’re trying to define a candidate, it’s just as important to have positive messaging as negative,” he said. “This is especially true when you’ve got first-time candidates.”

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An advertisement produced by Americans for Prosperity thanked Representative Steve Southerland for his vote against the Affordable Care Act.

The shift toward the positive also stems partially from the lessons of 2012, when Mr. Romney was hammered with negative spots, and his campaign and outside groups were criticized for not doing enough to combat the assault with positive messages of their own. According to Kantar Media/CMAG, 62 percent of all spots run about Mr. Romney in the general campaign were negative, compared with only 38 percent that portrayed him in a positive light.

Mr. Wilson, the Republican strategist, said he made a pitch to a super PAC in 2012 for positive ads that would emphasize Mr. Romney’s experience as a turnaround expert at Bain Capital. He said Mr. Romney’s business experience provided “an embarrassment of narrative riches.”

The group’s response was an unequivocal no: “They said, ‘We have a bunch of other ideas to go and nuke them,’ ” Mr. Wilson recalled. Bill Burton, a founder of Priorities USA, a pro-Obama group that was responsible for some of those anti-Romney ads, said: “There was a point at which Mitt Romney was really hurt by the fact that there were no positive ads or messages about his business experience. I think both sides saw that.”

Brian Baker, president for the Ending Spending Action Fund, which has long done positive advertising, said he had an ad ready to go as soon as Scott Brown announced his Senate bid in New Hampshire this month. The ad features Mr. Brown in 2010 warning of the consequences of the Affordable Care Act, before concluding on a bright note: “Scott Brown was right on Obamacare then. He’s right for New Hampshire now.”

“Sometimes voters get sick of all the negativity,” Mr. Baker said, “and they just want to be told, ‘This is a good guy, this is a good person.’ They want to be reaffirmed in that belief.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Political Attack Ads, Often Negative, Try Instead to Accentuate the Positive. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe